Now that the WGA strike is over, shows other than reality TV are going back into production. We won’t be doomed to an eternity of Are You Smarter than the Girl who Wants to Marry a Bajillionaire? crap. YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!!! Among a laundry list of shows that I don’t care about (I just don’t get into most stuff any more…in fact, I don’t even bother to watch most stuff any more), House is coming back on April 21 at 9 PM. Note the timeslot change–it’s on Mondays now, contrary to House’s line in a recent episode to the effect that broadcast TV would be good enough to watch on Tuesdays. At least it’s not a Friday Timeslot of DOOOOOOOOM.
While I’m on the subject*, what’s up with TV these days? I mean I get that TV networks would go broke if they planned their entire lineups to appeal to the IQ range that my friends and I inhabit, but on the flip side, all this crappy reality TV exists for two reasons: it’s cheap to make and it’s freaking insanely popular with The Masses. So, it would be nice if they would at least use those cheap profits to pay for the production of something of value…although really it would be more of an investment than a subsidy, since over time smart programming will earn more than Reality crap. Do the math…a Survivor season (whatevertheheck it’s called) can run each episode maybe 2-3 times, and then the tapes are worth their weight in film. Shows that can stand up to repeated viewings and that last a few seasons so that enough episodes are made can keep making money forever. A constant trickle over a long enough time can add up to more than even a huge single burst. I could say it in statistics notation with an inequality, which would be cool because any geekery involving Greek symbols cannot possibly be less than amazing, but I’d need another Wordpress plugin for that.
*note: this means “Avrila’s been waiting to rant about this for a long, long, LONG time”
So, I say to…well, everybody, though mostly the TV studios…think long term. Long term wins in the long run, and the nature of time will put us all into the long run eventually.